"The Sound Effects Shop offers a great service. Enquiries are answered quickly by friendly staff ... I would never go anywhere else!" - Nicola Peeperkoorn, DGP Films
General Definitions
Use of Products
Orders, Products and Shipping
General Questions
General Definitions
Who is SES – The Sound Effects Shop?
SES – The Sound Effects Shop is a worldwide distributor of the world's largest publishers of sound effects for the post production, professional broadcast, and motion picture industries. Sound Effects and Royalty Free Music from our publishers are used in a number of products such as multimedia, game and Web design. The Sound Effects Shop distributes for publishers such as Sound Ideas and the BBC. SES features studio sound effect libraries such as 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm, Universal Studios, Turner Entertainment, Disney Ideas, Hanna-Barbera, and Warner Bros.
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What is a Sound Effect?
Sound Effects are thousands of different single isolated sounds, special effects and background ambiences. These include everyday sounds like doorbells, car horns and telephone rings, specialty sounds like comedy, fantasy and science fiction FX and musical accents, and longer background ambience tracks to make the listener really feel like they are in places like a courtroom, a church, a train station, a thunderstorm or a jungle. Most of our sound effects are published in pristine Red Book CD Audio format, and the remainder of our high quality material is available as CD ROM-based wav and/or MP3 files - available for ready multimedia use.
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What is Metadata?
Metadata is "information about information" and it is one of the really useful features of digital audio files. When audio went from analogue to digital, it became possible to label or encode audio files with more information than could be contained in just the filename. That identifying information is called "metadata".
Metadata can be used to name, describe, catalogue and indicate ownership or copyright for a digital audio file, and its presence makes it much easier to locate a specific audio file within a group - through use of a search engine that accesses the metadata. As different digital audio formats were developed, it was agreed that a standardized and specific location would be set aside within the digital files where this information could be stored.
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What are Production Elements?
Production Elements - also called Imaging Elements - are audio clips used to sweeten a recorded production, usually for radio broadcast intros, promos, transitions and attention grabbers.
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What are Musical Elements?
Musical Elements are production elements that include a short musical melody, a brief musical chord sequence (also known as a "riff" or a "lick"), or the sound of a recognizable musical instrument being played without accompaniment.
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What is Production Music?
Production Music is music that has been written especially for use in audio and audio visual productions, like radio and television broadcasts, commercials and jingles, motion picture and video scores and soundtracks, corporate & training presentations, Web sites, computer games, software applications and multimedia.
It is generally placed in the background, behind the dialog or voiceover - it can set the mood, provide a suitable backdrop for a message, promote the product, activity or event being featured, identify the location of the scene or highlight the plot’s action.
Production Music is designed and licensed for synchronization applications in productions - it can either be stock music produced for ready use, or it can be commissioned from a composer as specialty compositions for a particular production.
A Production Music CD typically contains 8 to 15 compositions, each one offered in several different versions or lengths: a full length version, an underscore or rhythm track version (for more subtle use under voiceovers), and a number of different broadcast lengths (60 seconds, 30 seconds and 5 to 15 second stingers). The broadcast lengths are produced to eliminate the need for the user to create his own edits for specific kinds of production applications (like commercial spots).
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What is Royalty Free Music?
Royalty Free Music - also called buyout music - is a specific kind of stock or production music, produced for unlimited use in an unspecified number of applications and productions.
The Royalty Free Music user pays an upfront price to purchase unlimited lifetime synchronization rights and the CDs, but he does not purchase the music itself.
There are no additional license fees owed to the composers or publishers when Royalty Free Music is used, and there is no annual license fee or additional fees or clearances required for use of the music.
This means that Royalty Free Music tracks must be synchronized within a multimedia presentation, film, Web site, game, audio-visual production or broadcast.
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What is Copyright?
A simple definition of Copyright is the "right to copy, publish or perform". It is a way of expressing the legal exclusive right of ownership.
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What is Synchronization?
Synchronization is the term that describes the way in which sound effects can be utilized in productions that you create. A sound can be synchronized with a visual presentation (the sound of a creaky door timed perfectly to be heard when a door opens), or with other audio material such as a voice over - as in the case of a radio commercial. A sound can be synchronized for use in many media: television, radio, film, multimedia and audio-visual presentations, Web sites, computer games and music.
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What are Synchronization Rights?
With a synchronization license, you gain permission to reproduce a musical composition within an audio-visual media form (like films, TV programs, commercial announcements, music videos, multimedia or other visual presentations). The music is generally synchronized and/or recorded in timed relation with the visual images, graphic design or voiceover.
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What does Royalty Free mean?
Sound effects can be sold as royalty free (or buyout) products and their use is governed by the license agreement. When you buy Royalty Free music, you buy the rights to synchronize the sounds with your productions. While you own the physical CDs that make up the library and you are allowed to synchronize them for use in your productions - the sounds and their copyright will always belong to the copyright holder of the product.
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What does Public Domain mean?
From the time a piece of music is created, it is protected by Copyright. The international laws governing copyright are the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention. Under the Berne Convention, copyright extends for the life of the composer plus a minimum of 50 years following his or her death.
Most of the world's industrial countries have signed the Berne Convention and comply with it - although all countries have their own copyright laws which may extend the copyright period for an additional number of years. Many countries have extended this copyright term to a period of 70 years following the death of the composer. Once a piece of music has existed beyond the copyright protection of a country, that piece of music is considered to be in the Public Domain in that country. If you are intending to use a piece of music that is in the Public Domain, make sure that you check the Copyright Laws in all countries where the production will be used to make sure that your use conforms to the laws of those countries.
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What are Performing Rights?
The composer and publisher of a piece of music generally reserve the right to receive compensation any time their music is performed in public, hence the term Performing Rights. Around the world, performance rights societies (like ASCAP and BMI in the United States or SOCAN in Canada), collect public performance revenue from radio and TV stations and networks, movie theatres and other sources. This public performance revenue is divided among the composers and publishers based on "reported use", which is usually submitted via a Cue Sheet.
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What is a Sampled Sound?
A sampler device permits the recording (sampling) and replay (playback) of audio in a digital format - so a sampled sound is one that has been digitized and stored in the RAM memory of a sampler. The sampler allows the digitized audio file to be amplified and manipulated in different ways, for example: playback of the sampled sound at a different speed will alter its pitch. Samplers vary in their purpose and capabilities - some of them can be used to record and edit the different notes of almost any instrument - a piano, a flute, drums, or whatever you need to simulate the sound of a full orchestra or band. Use of a MIDI keyboard with a sampler allows you to "play" a full range of notes for the instrument(s) of your choice. Some samplers are also designed to offer sound effects and accents as well as music and percussion sounds, and many samplers have the ability to "loop" an audio file, which means that you can extend the playback time of the note just by holding down the key longer. Features like these make samplers and sampled sound very versatile for the production of customized audio.
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What is meant by CD Audio or Red Book Audio format?
Red Book Audio refers to the technical standards that have been set by the audio industry for the physical production of CDs, such as the overall dimension of the CD, the size of the CD hole and how the audio is burned on to the CD. This CD Audio format is not the same as the format of wav or MP3 files. CD Audio is designed for listening on a CD Player. If you have a multimedia program installed on your computer that will play standard audio CDs, you will be able to use your CD ROM drive to play back and listen to the sound effects or music on the CD.
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What is Foley?
Foley recording is a specialty technique, designed to produce simulated everyday and extreme sounds for synchronization and audio sound replacement usage in motion pictures. Without the magic of Foley, you would never hear someone's footsteps in a film - these and many other sounds must be dubbed in again on the film's soundtrack in order to be heard by the audience.
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What is an Adobe PDF file - how do I get the software required to view a PDF file on your site?
A PDF file (PDF stands for "portable document format") is one created by Adobe's Acrobat software. It displays text in a reader-friendly format - as if it had been created by a word processor or desktop publisher. The reason that it's so portable though is that it can be downloaded readily for screen display or printing by your Web browser and read by any computer that has the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software installed - it doesn't matter if your computer is a PC or a Mac. And yes ... the Adobe Acrobat Reader software is free - download it from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html.
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Use of Products
Can I use sound effects on my Web site?
Yes, within the following limits... you can synchronize sound effects for playback only on your Web site, so that button rollovers "bark" or a banner crackles in the "wind". This type of use is absolutely legal. But you are not allowed to distribute sound effects in any way - whether you intend to give, trade, loan or sell them. You are not permitted to present sound effects in any way that would allow access to the sound effects or sounds as downloadable audio.
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Can I use sound effects in my music?
Yes you can. This qualifies as synchronizing our sounds with other audio content.
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Can I use sound effects in my computer game?
Yes you can, provided that the sounds are embedded in the code of your game and are not available for an end-user to access or download.
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I am making a video game for release in retail stores. Can I use your sound effects in it?
Yes you can.
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Do I have to pay you more if I include sound effects in a production that will be broadcast on radio or TV?
Sound effects are sold as royalty free products. This means that you do not need to pay any additional money if a production is going to be broadcast or performed publicly.
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Can sound effects be used for live theatre productions?
Yes. Our sound effects can be incorporated into a live theatre production, either through the creation of a cued tape or CD created especially for the production, or through use of a direct cue from the original library CD.
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Orders, Products, and Shipping
Can I get free shipping?
SES provides free shipping for any orders over $200 in North America. All other orders have stated shipping calculations on checkout before you purchase.
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Can I transfer your sounds to computer hard disk myself, or have it done for me?
Yes, provided that you own the products that you want to transfer. If you decide to sell your hard drive at a later date, however, ALL audio files MUST be removed from the disc before you transfer ownership. You are not authorised to sell copied versions of our audio files under any circumstances - this practice is an infringement of the copyright.
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Can I copy sound effects or music on to my computer hard drive in order to create a production?
Yes. The synchronization license that you obtain with your purchase of royalty free sound effects and music allows you to copy the files on to your computer hard drive for the purposes of creating audio and/or visual productions or applications. This means that if, for example, you decide to sell a computer hard drive that has copyrighted audio content copied on to it, you must delete that content before the hard drive is delivered to its new owner.
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Can I make a back up copy of my CDs?
No. You are not permitted to make additional backup copies of CDs or their contents under any circumstance.
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How can I pay for orders made on your website?
Sound Effects Shop accepts the following credit cards for online orders: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Paypal. All sales on the SES Web site are made in U.S. currency.
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Can I buy a single CD?
Our publishers sell their products in complete sets - however, there are many products available are comprised of one or two CDs only.
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Do you sell European or international sound effects?
Yes - a number of our products contain a good selection of international sound effects -
Series 3,000 Ambience I Sound Effects Library
Series 7,000 Ambience II Sound Effects Library
Series 10,000 Ambience III Sound Effects Library
The BBC Sound Effects Library - Original Series
The BBC Sound Effects Library - Second Edition
De Wolfe Sound Effects Library
De Wolfe Classic Sound Effects Library
The Audio Pro European Sound Effects Library
Digiffects Sound Effects Library
Studio Fontana Sound Effects Library.
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Do you sell "computer ready", wav, or MP3 audio files?
Yes. SES has multiple podcasting products.
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General Questions
Does SES have a Security and Privacy Policy?
Yes, we do indeed have a published policy to protect your security and privacy. It is available on this Web site - we suggest that you review them before using this site.
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How can I contact SES with a question or my feedback?
Please feel free to ask your questions, say hello and offer your feedback on our Contact Us page - we love to hear from you!
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I use a Windows PC computer. Why do I sometimes get rows of boxes instead of lines of text when I print your track and index or other PDF files?
This appears to happen to PC users who have Adobe Acrobat (TM) software configured to open up PDF files within their Netscape or Internet Explorer browser window. The best way to avoid this problem is to print by either using the File menu in the top left hand corner of the browser, or by clicking on the browser’s printer icon - in the top row of menu icons (on the right side of your screen). We therefore suggest that you avoid clicking on the printer icon found near the top left in the row of Acrobat icons that is displayed inside the browser window.
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